Facilities and Instrument taxonomy

[Anne Catherine Raugh]

There is an increasing call for such a thing, and not just for astrophysics
- planetary has similar issues. The PDS approach was designed specifically
for spacecraft. Attempts to extend it to groundbased and airborne
observatories have been, shall we say, less than satisfying.

The only lists I have encountered for planetary are very purpose-driven:
The Minor Planet Center list of Observatory Codes (
https://minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/ObsCodesF.html) exists to provide
very specific coordinates for the point of observation which are then used
to derive the astrometry of submitted observations. It includes only
observatories that have contributed observations to the MPC. Sometimes
"observatory" includes a telescope designation, sometimes not. The
Planetary Data System "context collection" (
https://pds.nasa.gov/data/pds4/context-pds4/), which provides unique
internal identifiers and high-level description for things like spacecraft
and instruments, is a patchwork of confusion between observatory sites,
observatory organizations, telescope names/sizes, and so on applied nearly
randomly by people who just want to have "the answer" to fill in their data
labels. Context objects are created as they are needed in PDS, so there is,
in general, very little planning or stability in assigning identifiers. PDS
nodes other than my own do not seem to consider this an important
consideration, so even the small collection there is corrupted by
duplication and misidentification.

I don't know the underlying database criteria or how it was maintained, but
I thought there might have been more order in the collection of the
Astronomical Almanac. Unfortunately, their observatory search page is
nonfunctional and apparently abandoned:
https://asa.hmnao.com/SecJ/Observatories.html.

Anne Raugh
PDS Small Bodies Node
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-2421
301-405-6855


On Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 5:10 AM Robert Rovetto <ontologos at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi Alberto,
>
> One of my works-in-progress is a taxonomy/ontology of spaceflight missions
> (broadly construed).
>
> If you and your colleagues are interested in creating one specifically for
> astrophysics, I'm very interested in formally working together to do that.
>
> Please contact me in any case.
>
> Roberto Rovetto
> --
> Schedule a Meeting <http://tinyurl.com/r2qb6d42>.
> Hire ontology services <https://tinyurl.com/yas7trzy>.
> NASA Datanauts Open Data Initiative class of 2017.
>
> https://purl.org/space-ontology (Orbital Space Domain Knowledge Modeling
> <http://purl.org/space-ontology>)
>
> Research Affiliate <http://www.coder.umd.edu/node/287>, Center for
> Orbital Debris Education & Research.
> Education Committee, International Association for Ontology and its
> Applications.
>
> ORCID <http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3835-7817>:
> http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3835-7817
> On Thursday, January 27, 2022, 06:02:17 PM EST, Accomazzi, Alberto <
> aaccomazzi at cfa.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
>
> Dear Semantics,
>
> I have been asked by NASA colleagues if there is an existing taxonomy of
> Missions, facilities and instruments in use in Astrophysics.  This of
> course brought back fond memories of discussions I've had with some of you
> over the past decade, but I'm afraid I haven't followed any of the recent
> conversations on the topic.
>
> So I found my way to the following IVOA pages:
> https://wiki.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/UniFacil
> https://wiki.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/MetaTelInst
>
> From what I can gather, some progress has been made but there is still no
> official list that this WG has endorsed or is even considering at this
> point.  Is this correct?  And if so, are there any "work in progress" lists
> that are available for inspection?
>
> Thanks,
> Alberto
>
> --
>
> *Alberto Accomazzi*
>
> Program Manager and Principal Investigator
>
> NASA Astrophysics Data System
>
> Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
>
> 60 Garden Street | MS 83 | Cambridge, MA 02138
>
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